Noah @ 2.5 years

It's been a while since I've written a proper update on Noey.

Not that I haven't wanted to, but he's grown, and continues to grow so fast, as all children do. So much so that I wonder: how do I condense all that he is, at any one point, into a page (even if it is a very long page)? It's no longer just about physical milestones. Aspects of his character have emerged, both the good and the bad.

Noey passed the 2.5 year (30 month) mark earlier this month -- he's zooming into his 31st month as we speak -- and aside from the fact that his speech and understanding have gotten more sophisticated, the most apparent change has been social. Over the past couple of months, a switch seems to have flipped, and Noey has suddenly become interested in interacting with other children. And with that, he's also finally FINALLY become better at sharing his toys. I first noticed it when Nish brought little Anya round shortly after Chinese New Year. Noey actually tried to talk to her and show/give her his trains, which I've never seen him do. He even happily led her to his room to look for more toys. The same thing with Caitlin.

I'm glad. While I don't have an issue with him choosing to be a loner, it's nice to see him participating in interactive play. It's a sign to me that he's more ready for school, and will enjoy it when the time comes.

I must confess, 2.5 years is a tiring age. There are many days that I do not enjoy, where the rebellion, the crying and the general noise level just gets to me. But even as I hope he grows out of all that, I know I still want to hang on to my little boy. Even as I write this, I know that the list that follows is so inadequate to describe the boy that he is, and is growing to be. But the Mummy in me just wants to capture a bit, if but just a glimpse of the baby who is turning into a boy right before my eyes. So this, here, is where I try to retain a bit of him, in an imperfect record.

Noey at 2.5 years:

♥ is approximately 92-93cm tall and weighs 12.5kg, which makes him about 75th percentile for height but only 50th percentile for weight. My tall skinny boy!

♥ is completely toilet-trained. Even overnight! About 2 months ago he started asking to use the potty even when he was wearing his diaper and he would take off both his pants and diaper himself when he needed to pee. He's been completely diaperless for more than a month now, and has only had a couple of accidents at night when he was really tired. He potties on his own, but still doesn't put his pants back on on his own. He can do it, but I know he prefers to run around pants-less!

(After I wrote this, he has had a string of accidents at night, involving my bed. During one incident, he even managed to take off his pants in his sleep and THEN pee on the bed. Arrrrrgh. After he did it 2 nights in a row, we have insisted that he wear a diaper to bed yesterday night.)

♥ has finally learnt the alphabet. He has no problems identifying the uppercase letters, but occasionally mixes up some of the lowercase letters. He tends to refer to small "l" as the number "one", for example. I guess it was just a matter of him being ready. For the longest time, he'd shake his head and say "No!" every time I tried to point out a letter. Then sometime a month or 2 ago, he started repeating after me. I started teaching him the letters on the go, pointing out letters on signages, on t-shirts, and on pictures in his books. It was very ad-hoc, especially with the new baby in the house, but he got it within a few weeks.

♥ is figuring phonics out. He can guess correctly the starting letter of various words when we sound out the word to him. He would also spontaneously tell me the sounds that various letters make, mainly the b, c/k, d, m, and s sounds. For this I have my neighbour to thank -- she gave me a who set of books which her son had used more than 20 years ago which, amongst other things, taught the letters of the alphabet together with simple phonics. Noey loves the stories and picked up on the teaching points really quickly. Now I'm looking for further teaching tools to guide him along in this.

♥ can count pretty well, up to 10. He seems unwilling to go beyond that, though he can recite numbers up to 20 (and is unwilling to go beyond THAT!). He can also identify/read all his numbers up to 10.

♥ is really speedy with a skate-scooter. My heart is in my mouth every time he speeds down a slope but mostly he's managed to make it unscathed. We've been zooming around the estate a fair bit these days.

Already looking like a mini Beng.

♥ is, in spite of the point above, really not a dare devil at all. In fact, he's quite a chicken and can be scared into not attempting certain stunts if you tell him it would be painful. The grandparents do this a lot and I have to tell them not to do it too much or he'll be a real wuss. He is also scared of the dark.

♥ is, in addition to the above, turning out to be a bit of a klutz. He's always bumping into things and falling over! That's my genes unfortunately. Thankfully his hand-eye coordination and ball-sense seem to be pretty good.

♥ still cannot jump off the ground with both feet!

♥ LOVES jigsaws. His favourite set is a box with 5 different Lightning Mcqueen puzzles, ranging from 6-18 pieces per puzzle. We used to separate the pieces for the different puzzles into different ziplock bags, but have since given up since he loves to do all the different ones simultaneously. He can also complete a 45-piece floor puzzle by himself.

"Yay!" he says, upon finishing each one. And he insists you applaud his achievement as well.

♥ still sleeps with us, no thanks to the fact that he still looks for my elbow and loves to stroke my leg to sleep. So much for kicking him onto his own bed!

♥ still hates milk. I'm looking forward to the day when I don't have to force-feed it to him! Despite hating milk, he does love ice-cream (which kid doesn't??), though his favourite part of the McDonald's ice-cream cone is the wafer cone. This is his Kong Kong's fault. I can't pry it away from him.

♥ still completely HATES haircuts. "Noey likes the long hair", he insisted, when we brought him for his recent haircut. (He was sporting a mullet and we had no choice after dragging our feet for more than a month.)

Even the ice-cream cone we gave him pre-haircut didn't sweeten the deal.

♥ says the funniest things. Just last weekend, we went for lunch at Riders Cafe, and we were standing in the outdoor area overlooking the stables when it started to rain. I spied a horse looking out the back of the stable and pointed it out to Noey.

"What is the horse doing?" he asked.

"It's looking out the back of the stable," I replied (unimaginatively).

"And the horse is saying, 'Oh my! The rain is coming down from the sky!", he said.

I cracked up.

♥ just can't get his "I/You" pronouns straight. He is still saying "You want..." when he wants something, after we've been correcting him for, hmmm, 6 months at least? I know it's mostly just a bad habit by now. In his moments of clarity, he has pointed out to me that "Mummy says 'you' and Noey says 'I'". He gets it right about half the time now, but it still is a bit confusing talking to him at times! He's resorted to getting around the problem by talking about himself in third person, which really doesn't help matters.

♥ still has to be fed his meals. And read to/flip a book when he eats. I really should get round to training him to eat on his own, but this boy really isn't interested in food. Plus he's skinny enough as it is already. I'm really hoping school will help in this respect.

I only feed myself yummy stuff like crisps!

♥ is tantrum-ing through his Terrible Twos. This is really a whole post in itself. Typical scenario: I ask him to do something. He refuses and tells me he wants to do the opposite of what I want. I insist. I threaten. I raise my voice. He cries, and cries dramatically, sometimes with undesirable physical actions. It's getting really tiring dealing with this every day at home. I need guidance on how to deal with him better.

♥ is now very keen on TV, but still refuses to watch cartoons or kids' programmes! Instead his favourite channel is Animal Planet, followed by Sports and News. "Let's watch 'Planet Earth', he would tell me. I've been sneaking in quite a bit of American Idol though. His favourite thing to watch though are the commercials. He'd race to sit-down on the sofa to watch the commercials because, as he explained, they are over so quickly that he is afraid that if he doesn't sit down to watch them, he'd miss them. He is so weird, I tell you.

I think we might be seeing the two of them in this position 10 years from now!

♥ continues to be a sensitive soul. And a Mummy's boy.